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Surely
not?Toyota do have one of the most
stringent EMC standards, although exceptionally difficult to obtain and hence
sometime not always up to date with all suppliers.Also once “in” with Toyota sometimes these things can be missed.Personally we doubt this is an EMC issue and believe it is more a
mechanical problem, but then we would say that!

These
2 article from TTI’s on-line market analysis show that the passive market is
suffering the same way the general IC market is. Although allocation does
not yet seem to be rearing its ugly head (for passives at least), longer lead
times and potential shortages of capacitors in particular could become a
significant issue for the EMC of new designs going into any recovery that might
appear in the coming year.

This
EE Times article may completely miss the point, why would you want all the world
in your car, is there no safe haven these days from connectivity? Surely once it
is onto your mobile phone then this is the primary portal to any/all other
interconnected systems, hence a connection to the car need only be
vehicle-to-phone, but wait, that already exists in Bluetooth? After all
you can’t be expected to read while driving, so an audio feed is much better
and Bluetooth is easily able to handle this data without modification, hence the
translation can remain on the mobile phone where updating and replacement are
easy and (relatively speaking) low cost.

And
then Ford jump on the connected bandwagon at the Consumer Electronics Show?How about some customer focus.As
one responder puts it; “Where’s the autopilot?”If you really don’t want to drive, but want to talk, browse and do
other things, simply take public transport or a taxi?It’s probably cheaper as well as safer.

Well
we couldn’t miss an opportunity to mention the big Toyota story of the start
of the decade (again).If this can
happen to the largest car maker, how on earth have the rest of them been getting
by?Is this an issue that could
become endemic with shared platforms and common components?Or is the issue somewhat “overblown” by the media?Whatever the case it has certainly brought the auto industry and the
electronics and software content of cars to the fore in the public perception,
unfortunately for the wrong reasons.

Could
this really, finally, be the decade of the electric car?The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), through its Advanced Vehicle Testing
Activity (AVTA) at Idaho National Laboratory, has completed 1 million miles of
plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) testing.

Any
growth has to be a good thing, but who out there believes this will happen in
2010?What will lead times extending
to over 26 weeks, investments at an all time low and talk of allocations in the
semiconductor industries, how is this growth going to be fuelled?

Although
Spyker may be the most open about their offer, press from GM suggests they may
not have been the only name in the frame. Although Koenigsegg Group AB
pulled out (this would have maintained the Swedish brand wholly in Sweden), who
else might have the finances in the current economic climate is near impossible
to guess. In what has been a tough 2009 from everyone in the Auto
Industry, GM more than most it would seem, but Saab employees and loyal fans may
be the biggest losers of the New Year (let’s hope not).

As
a adjunct to the usual EMC, this new journal covers all those other
environmental tests (HASS, HALT, acoustics, eco-design etc.) that are likely to
be allied to the automotive and EMC arena,Although
neither exclusive to the automotive world or to these interested in EMC, it is
good to see new developments in the media world, especially after the demise of
Conformity last year.

Apologies
for the space between the last 2 issues, we’ve been suffering some loss of
contributors and the usual mis-firing of IT that seems to occur around the start
of the year.Welcome back to all our
regular subscriber and lets hope 2010 is a better year.We notice a significant fall in readership over 2009, losing some 15% of
the e-mail subscribers over the year.We
hope all those left have a successful 2010.

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